Celia Stone

New Dyscalculia Assessment Available Now

What are the signs of Dyscalculia? We have collected together a list of the difficulties experienced by people who may have a diagnosis of Dyscalculia, which you can find on our new assessment page.

Having worked in the U.K. in the field of Dyslexia for over 32 years and more recently Dyscalculia for the past 10 years, I believe that, with all learning difficulties, the process of arriving at a clear diagnosis often involves peeling away layers of possible learning difficulties until you arrive at the fundamental issues.

The aim of this assessment is not as much to arrive at a clinical diagnosis as to identify potential areas of difficulty and more specifically to give parents and teachers a clear idea of how to remediate these problems.

Direct From the Authors

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve now added our step-by-step multi-sensory literacy programme, Beat Dyslexia to our online shop, and because you’re buying direct from us, the authors, we can offer each of the 6 books at a flat price of £25 plus postage and packaging. The books are also available from outlets such as Amazon and from publisher LDA, however, the prices can vary widely and they’re not always available.

Each of the books has recently been updated (after first being published in 1998!) and Book 6 was added to the series last year.

The success of Beat Dyslexia inspired us to create the numeracy equivalent, Beat Dyscalculia.

Synopsis

This new, revised edition retains all the strengths of the well-established “Beat Dyslexia” series to support those students struggling to read, write or spell. The comprehensive programme develops literacy skills by combining successful phonological approaches with the very best of conventional, multi-sensory and structured teaching methods. The series takes pupils from the earliest stages of letter recognition through to full literacy. Using a wide range of imaginative approaches, the activities are carefully structured so that all the goals are small and attainable. Pupils gain confidence through consolidation and success as they develop their reading skills and build a sound understanding of basic spelling and grammar. The wide variety of phonic activities are based on multi-sensory techniques that assist the teacher in maintaining pupils’ interest and enthusiasm – making them ideal for those with short concentration spans. Although primarily designed for dyslexic pupils of all ages, in one-to-one or small group sessions, the careful use of visual and aural approaches, in a clearly structured progression, make them suitable for any pupil struggling to acquire literacy skills.

I have been thinking again about problems with the empty box calculations and came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to practise with the children using the reading pack sentence cards and a blank card to replace the empty box, before giving them the written work. This would get them prepared.

So when making sentences you would do lots of:

2+3=5; 3+2=5; 5=3+2; 5=2+3

Now place the blank card on top of one of the numbers and say, “What am I hiding?”

This week I’ve been training up the staff at Ashdown Lodge Nursery in Apperley Bridge in our new nursery version of Beat Dyscalculia, Sumtastics, ready for them to trial it for us.

Sumtastics was originally designed to work as a ‘club’ in Private Day Nurseries, like more established language, music and dancing clubs, delivered by trained Sumtastics practitioners who come into nursery on a weekly basis to deliver specific themed sessions. However, more and more when we’re going into Primary schools to train their teachers in the Beat Dyscalculia programme, we’re also training their Early Years staff. Ashdown Lodge is therefore trying out our Sumtastics programme and resources in their own setting, delivered by their own staff.

One thing we’re discovering is that the programme, which includes songs, stories and activities, and encourages children to use all their senses to explore numbers, also helps children meet many of their Early Years goals in areas such as counting, reading, colour, language, drawing, speaking, singing, games, social interaction. And the Early Years teachers are enjoying having a ready-made programme that’s fun, but also meets all these targets without them having to create something themselves.

Ashdown Lodge are taking the ideas from each of our sessions and putting them out as individual small activities for children to choose and complete in small groups. They’re then using the songs and stories, based around a set of crayons that come to life each night and add colour to the world, to bring everyone together for the start and end of each session.

We hope that ultimately, Sumtastics will give children a good grounding, understanding and interest in numeracy that continues through school, and which can continue with our Beat Dyscalculia programme as they get older.

We’ll let you know how things progress as the trial continues, however, in the meantime if you’d like to know more about Sumtastics or Beat Dyscalculia for your nursery or school, please contact us.

Since the announcement of the new national curriculum from September 2014, schools have been contacting us about using Beat Dyscalculia as the basis of their numeracy teaching.

Beat Dyscalculia uses a multi-sensory approach which appeals to a wide range of children and caters to their different learning styles. It creates solid foundations, and then allows children to build on that knowledge at their own pace, by using repetition, and using a specially designed set of tools to explore and visualise numbers, and use for problem solving.

Beat Dyscalculia Founder and Creator, Celia Stone said, ‘Our programme focusses on teaching the language of numbers which is one of the key elements of the new national curriculum. Although, it has been designed to help children who are struggling with maths and number concepts, our evidence shows that it works for any children by working in small achievable steps, letting them use different tools and methods for to explore the same ideas and functions, and allowing to work at a speed that suits them. We think it’s ideal for introducing ideas like fractions and times tables at a younger age, as the new maths framework proposes.’

In particular, Beat Dyscalculia puts an emphasis on maths vocabulary, understanding each number, number bonds and place value. The course comes in 3 boxes and uses colour, shape, sound and touch to progressively build understanding and covers:

Numbers from 0 to 999

The concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division

The language of numeracy

Place value, fractions and decimals

Money, time, and times tables

Special Offer:

Order before the end of term and get

the full Beat Dyscalculia programme – 3 boxes, plus training for just £900 (the equivalent of 1 Pupil Premium)

or 3 full sets (9 boxes) plus training for just £1800 (the equivalent of 2 Pupil Premiums)

Celia Stone, one of the creator’s of Beat Dyscalculia and Beat Dyslexia, and MD of Addacus Ltd, has been nominated for a Sue Ryder Woman of Achievement Award. She has been nominated in the Education category in recognition of her hard work and achievements in helping people with dyslexia, Irlen Syndrome and dyscalculia over the last 35 years, in her adopted home county of Yorkshire.

The awards ceremony takes place at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds on June 7th. The event aims to recognise and celebrate the achievements of some of Yorkshire’s amazing women, whilst raising vital funds for Sue Ryder. The charity, which is 60 years old this year, cares for people with incurable illnesses and funds a number of homes, hospices and services in Yorkshire.

For further information about Sue Ryder and the awards, visit their website.

Celia Stone is one of the most inspiring, yet unassuming women I’ve ever met. She has changed the lives of both my husband and my daughter, along with thousands of other young people.

She has tackles every challenge that life has throws at her with pragmatism and the question, ‘how can we make a plan?’: From fleeing the threat of violence and unrest in her native Zimbabwe in the 70’s, with her husband, 3 small children, £500 and whatever they could carry; to setting up a specialist dyslexia unit at the Yorkshire school where her husband taught.

She now has more than 35 years’ experience of working with children with special educational needs – including my husband who was thrown out of his local primary school aged 7, because they ‘couldn’t teach him’. With Celia’s help, his dyslexia hasn’t held him back and he has gone on to become a successful entrepreneur, speaker and local businessman. At 18, she screened him for Irlen lenses – coloured glasses which helped him read for the first time. 25 years later she did the same for our daughter.

In the meantime, alongside her full-time role as a wife, mother, and teacher, she set up a regional centre for Irlen lenses in Yorkshire and co-wrote Beat Dyslexia – a best-selling multi-sensory literacy programme that’s used in schools throughout the country. Since retiring from teaching, inspired by a little boy called Oliver who didn’t know what ‘times’ meant, she has created a companion ‘Beat Dyscalculia’ programme for kids who have problems with maths. It includes a counting machine called an Addacus that she has invented and patented!